Being and Nothingness

God on existentialism

I've read Sartre's Nausea and L'estranger (the stranger) by Albert Camus.

Time is eternal, going both forward and back, which makes us even less than blip in the history of the universe. I believe there was an eternity of time before the big bang, and there will be an eternity of time after all of us are dead. How can anything have meaning in a context like this?

And space... We are the smallest of small in an incomprehensible vast. The known universe is just speck in an even greater Vast.

We are just animals, the product of evolution, who arose from matter, and remain just matter, if you dare to see it that way. We have thumbs and brains and vocal chords that permit us a great culture, and we have books that create worlds for us, including religious works that tell us we are more special and unique than we really are. I believe we each have the same claim on life as an ant, or even a spider, however repulsive we may find them.

This could be interpreted as a free ticket to act any way you like...you only live once, and people are just like bugs, which we squash without compunction. I actually can't refute this. Only that love is purported to be omnipotent, and there's this concept of hell lurking out there as a potential eternally painful punishment. There are these pesky things called neurons, protecting our fragile bodies, that unfortunately give us pain upon injury. But no God would be that evil, of course. Neurons die at death, too. We just have to do unto others as we would have them do to us, unless other people would prefer it otherwise.
(that's my addendum to the golden rule)

Absurdity is in the bible. All is vanity (translated as frustration, futility, nonsense, or absurdity). Being good is supposed to be it's own reward. Why be good for heaven? You don't have a soul to go there, and your body will decay to dust, so it's just fodder for your imagination that I wouldn't give very much weight to, besides having something to wonder about and look forward to upon one's death.

Did you know that we are mostly empty space? 99.999999999999 % of us empty. that's point with twelve nines. We barely exist. So oblivion isn't really much difference from the current state of affairs. But that's not how we experience ourselves.

"Go out to love and serve the lord", as the priests say at the end of Catholic mass.
or
"You know what your problem is? You need to get more fun out of life", as Hannibal Lecter said in Silence of the Lambs.

I would point out that these are not incompatible. Go out to love and serve Hannibal Lector. (don't worry, he doesn't exist either)

:-)